Survey: People Are Becoming More Accepting of Anti-Gay Christian Business Owners

Over the past five years, the percentage of Americans who think business owners should be able to discriminate against gay or lesbian customers has gone up for every demographic, according to a new survey from PRRI.

Just consider a political breakdown. While Republicans have, not surprisingly, more than doubled their own bigotry from 21% to 47%, even Democrats have seen an upward creep from 11% to 18%.

No one gets a free pass, either. When you break it down by religion, sure, white evangelicals are at the top of the bigot list, but 22% of religiously unaffiliated people now say it’s okay for Christian business owners to discriminate against gays and lesbians, up from 12% just five years ago.

It’s not just gay or lesbian people who are deemed acceptable to discriminate against either. Americans are increasingly likely to say business owners should be allowed to refuse service to customers of all kinds if it violates their religious beliefs… even if those customers are Jews, atheists, or African Americans. (There’s no data for trans people and Muslims from 2014.)

The moral of the story? As Supreme Court battles over acceptable forms of faith-based discrimination rage on, people are unfortunately becoming more comfortable with that practice. Somehow we’ve become more sympathetic to bigoted Christian bakers than gay couples who just want to pay money to purchase a wedding cake from those stores.

It’s an alarming trend, only hastened by the constant anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policies coming from this Republican administration.